Episode 68: Three Episode Recommendations #2

Transcript

Well, I went back and looked. My goal for this had been to do this. My called shot, not a goal.
Had been to do this maybe once every month or so. I went back and looked. The last one was episode
55. So, this, I believe, is going to be episode 68.
You know, that was like early August. This is like mid to late September. It's pretty good.
You know, six, seven weeks. Anyway, so, some recommendations. Again, the premise of this
is just that I like listening to podcasts. There are many podcasts out there. It's not,
you know, if you go up to someone and recommend them a podcast, they tend,
you know, that may or may not ever really happen that they ever listen to that. I thought I'd get
a few out there. So, my goal in this is to not just recommend podcasts overall, but to really
recommend specific episodes that you might want to listen to. And there'll be links in the description.
So, and I'm going to break my own rule today because one of these, I did find a brand new podcast
that I thought is actually really, really interesting. But I'll recommend it at a particular
episode there as well. So, first recommendation for the day. This is episode 318 of the You Are Not
So Smart podcast. The episode is entitled The Intention Gap, and it's with a guest named Brit Frank.
It's also apparently a rebroadcast. They must have done this earlier in the run of the show.
So, I don't think I'd ever heard it before. It's probably just one of the ones I didn't listen
to or whatever. The episode overall is about, well, it's about a number of things, but one of the
focal points of it is around what they call the intention gap, which you could more colloquially
talk about in terms of procrastination, right? The idea is you intend to do something,
you do something else instead, and there's a gap between those things, right? Maybe you set out
for the day to accomplish something, and instead you sit around and, you know, watch YouTube or
whatever. But there's some pieces in here that I thought were really interesting. For one thing,
it talks a lot about motivation and not to be too, like, echo chamber-y about it, but one of the things
that the guest says is sort of reminiscent of some of the stuff I've talked about on this show.
I've talked a couple times about how to get motivated to do things and inspiration versus
grinding through things. One of the things that she brings up, at least physiologically,
motivation doesn't happen before doing the thing. It happens as a result of doing the thing.
So, the idea being, and again, this sort of plays into what I've talked about before on here,
one of the things I'm very interested in is, let's say you have an overall, like, life goal or
aspiration or whatever. And maybe, and I often talk about it in terms of, like,
being a creative type. So, let's say you want to, I don't know, record a song or something or record
an album. And a lot of creative types, myself included, will often sit around and wait for
motivation or inspiration to strike before going down that road. And one of the things she says is that
actually, motivation happens afterwards. So, it's more important to, you just get started,
even if the thing you're starting with kind of sucks. And then as you get into it, you will become
physiologically motivated to keep going. So, that among many other things discussed in here,
really good episode. I can see why, you know, he rebroadcasted this one and I brought it up again.
It's a fascinating one. So, check that out if any of that sounds kind of interesting.
Second recommendation, and this is where I'm going to break my own rule. I came across this podcast
called Love Factually. And I'm just loving this show. So, the general premise of this show is that
they watch a movie, usually some sort of romance or romance-adjacent movie. And then they,
the two hosts who are relationship scientists, they are expert in research surrounding what makes
good and bad and challenging and whatever relationships between people. So, they watch the movie
and then they dive into the science and talk about how accurately or inaccurately and the pros and cons
and problems and whatever with what the movie represents or shows in terms of the way those
relationships in the movie, like the romantic pieces of things. So, they've done movies like
Titanic. They did Frozen, Brokeback Mountain, like a lot of like, you know, again, heavily romantically
themed movies. And I think it's just, it's funny. It's a good listen. It's smart. There's a lot of
really interesting stuff. And we all have relationships in our lives to one extent or another.
And it's kind of a way to almost passively soak up information about what makes good and bad
relationships. And it's sort of like a good place for reflection as well as being really, really
entertaining. So, the one I had started with was episode 30. It's about Titanic. So, that's the one
I'm going to link to. But they have all kinds of movies on there. I encourage you to just, you know,
look through for like movies that you think might be interesting to listen about on this kind of
angle. Really fun show. Highly recommend it. I subscribed pretty much right away after here in
the first episode. Third, and this is an individual episode recommendation again. This was the Sunday
story from NPR's Up First for September 14th. It's called Life in a Christian Commune.
So, this is an interview with a woman who, and admittedly, I zoned out a little bit during the
intro of the show. But if I, you know, there was like some ads and stuff. I just didn't quite tune
back in on time. But anyway, if I listened, if I understood correctly, it's someone who was not
initially raised in a Christian commune, but who joined one to get some sort of peace and quiet in
life and some time for reflection. What I liked about this episode, I think regardless of where you
fall on religion and spirituality and organized religion versus, you know, not and all that kind of stuff,
the woman being interviewed talks about a lot of this stuff in a very intellectual and like practical
and like level-headed sort of way. This is not someone who's, you know, necessarily trying to
convert anybody to anything. Through a lot of it, it's not even particularly clear how religious she
actually is. It's just that she was looking for a change of pace and a way to zero in. And one of
the things that she talked about, and this is something I've been trying to find a way to
articulate for a long time, and the way she articulated, I thought, was just perfect. The general idea, and
you know how you'll go to like a, I don't know, a small gathering with friends or a party or
you go out to dinner with another couple or like, I don't know, like whatever social situations you
might find yourself in beyond your immediate nucleus of people that you live with and see every
day. And you'll, you know, you'll catch up and talk and whatever. And then you end up falling back
on stuff like, did you see this show? And then you talk about a show as if seeing a show is some sort
of great accomplishment, you know, or you might talk about a band you like, or you're talking about
things that other people have done as if you have in some way accomplished something meaningful.
And we all do this, right? Like I do this, like, oh, have you seen this show? Oh, you haven't seen
this show? It's so good. You got to check it out, right? Like what a meaningless thing to actually put
out there in the world. But what she talked about is that, you know, being kind of recentered and being
part of this commune, she realized that because no one else here had those experiences, like she
couldn't go to anyone in this commune and be like, have you seen such and such a show? Because they
haven't, they have no concept of it. They don't do it. She couldn't even talk about music because
talking about music, apparently they don't listen to music in this particular place. The only music
they hear is the music they sing together as part of like religious rituals and whatnot. Rituals are
not the right word there, but whatever. And the way she described this was she realized after being
there a while that these things like shows and bands and, you know, pop culture-y kind of stuff,
it's not actually you, they're accessories. And I love that word accessories. And the way she describes
it, I think, is better than how I'm summarizing it. But this idea that we hang accessories on
ourselves, like talking about a show you watch is really no different than wearing a pair of earrings
or a necklace or a pair of shoes or whatever. It's not you, it's just a thing that you hang on yourself
and use as decoration to seem like, you know, you have, I don't know, that that's where I lose the
train, I guess. But yeah, so anyway, interesting episode, really level-headed, just a really level-headed
kind of intellectual view on something that's often considered sort of extreme behavior.
I thought it was really interesting. So I'll link to those things. Again, I hope you enjoyed
the last recommendation show. I thought I'd do another one. I just want to do these every so
often because I think that it's there, you know, there's things that I stumble into that I think
are really interesting. So take a listen. If you like this kind of thing, you know, reach out,
let me know. Or if you think this is terrible and almost like a filler episode, which I don't intend
it to be. I don't mean to be like a flashback show from a sitcom in the 90s, but let me know
either way. I'm always interested to hear, you know, whether or not these sorts of things are useful to you.